Rudder shaping

More work on the rudders. After getting the stations on, it was time to fit the foam I had previously layered up with epoxy. I cut them to fit between the stations and when the pieces were clamped together, I could use my drill press to start some holes for where the shaft will be. Then I hogged the rest of the foam out with a knife and file, finding high spots by using a piece of sandpaper wrapped around a piece of aluminum tube.

Then using some thickened epoxy where the shaft lays in the foam, and regular epoxy over the rest of the mating surfaces, I glued them up using clamps. Decided against a vacuum bag just because clamps seemed good enough and quicker.

After the foam was on, I jumped right into shaping. I had shurform (not sure of spelling) tools from Stanley tools. One with a roughing type plate and one with a grit encrusted steel plate. I first had to glue on the bottom station to aid in developing final shape of the bottom of the rudder. To speed up shaping, I used a 9" sander/grinder to remove most of excess foam, the random/orbital sander to get down close to the stations, then the Shurforms to shape closer to final. The glue lines in the foam laminations proved tedious to work down, since they were so much harder than the surrounding foam. It is difficult to not lose to much foam either side of the glue line. The shurform with the grit plate worked good across the glue line after taking a file to get most out of the way.